Then the crowd became a little unsettled as quiet chatter among the game journalistic faction in attendance scattered about. Over the muttering, Miyamoto asked, "how can we profit from such a basic, universal, instinct?"

"Porn!" Hastily, loudly interrupted Harrison. The shock chatter of the press rose to a mini-ruckus. "I mean, we're gonna make games, that are, you know, pornos!"

"Indeed," replied Miyamoto. Just then, the two men donned fake, novelty, sleazy porn 'staches and generic porn-funk music started up on the speakers in the background.

"Wait now, you see all these slutty-ass bitches walking around with their asses hanging out of their pants. Society has a name for them: slutty-ass bitches. But we here at Nintendo think she's a symbol, a positive figure, a pioneer: she's being honest with herself. Remember: we're only here to make whoopi. Freud said so."

"We realized this would be the best business move for us when we noticed the controller was more like a remote control or a sex toy than a regular control pad. Like I said before, there might be a time when profitable gaming might come from this type of controller, but until that day comes, we have to act like it's a remote. Now, think of a big market. What do all people have in common: we function to have sex. We then got an idea: people like porn. You know that Hot Coffee deal you all talked aout a couple months back? Well, every game will be like a sex-type game. Either that or they'll be straightforward pornos, without the interaction, but all the sexual honesty."

"Porn!" Hastily, loudly interrupted Harrison. "Whoopsie! I already said that, sorry."

After that abrupt break in Miyamoto's justification, a question from the press was quickly flung at the Asian: "Mr. Miyamoto, what about Nintendo's child-friendly reputation?"

"Well, even the children of the lowest age are still suckin' on some titty. How is this not a sexual expression? That's because it is a flagrantly sexual expression, and don't give me any nonsense about babies needing milk. Freud says it to be so."

After going into an aside encouraging members of the press to "get it on" right then and there, Miyamoto continued: "We do know one thing: although we don't have as much violence as the other competitive consoles, there is no way any reasonable person who doesn't have sex all the time can say Nintendo is the kiddiest of the systems. I guess those honest with their sexuality can still make this claim since we are hormonally-driven sexual beasts the minute we're born, so I guess in that regard, we are a kiddie company."

Miyamoto's fake mustache then fell off his face disorienting him just long enough for "Oh, it's Frank Sikandio, high-ranking editor from [some gaming 'magazine' you've never heard of]. Hi, Shi, buddy. Can we still download old games into the system?"

"First off, who the hell are you? Don't call me Shi, you ass. And yes, from what I know you can still get the old games onto your Revolution if you're interested into fooling yourself into not wanting to have sex all the time. I don't know how it's possible to play Actraiser with one of these phallic things, but if you can, go for you."

"Porn!" Hastily, loudly interrupted Harrison. "Sorry, it's been a while since I spoke up and I really wanted the attention."

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press: it brings Nu-Metal here and I," Hawkins began as he gestured towards his guest, one donning extremely baggy shorts nearly reaching his ankles, an oversized football jersey, a poorly groomed goatee, shades (it was overcast) and a nappy head of hair suffering from an obvious bleach-related mishap.  He looks completely ridiculous, but Nu-Metal didn't seem to notice or care as he just stood there smiling present only to nod mindlessly for the duration and to dispense high-fives upon exclamation of his name.

"Great pleasure to announce the entry of Digital Chocolate into the mainstream gaming world. Nu-Metal!"

"Indeed," Added Hawkins as he held up a sign made of cardboard with what is perhaps the logo his company will put onto their products. It's made with crayons and magic markers, but mostly crayons.

"Now, some of you may recall I am a legendary figure in the gaming world manning the glorious 3DO name," cheekily noted Hawkins to the half dozen of us gathered on the front lawn of a run-down townhouse as he puffed out his chest a little bit. "Wait, of course you guys know that! Otherwise you wouldn't be here," he adds as two of the spectators, both young boys who rode in on bicycles during his introduction, pedal away hastily after getting an inkling as to what they were witnessing.

"Now what good would a software company be without any software? None, right! It brings me almost as much pleasure as the announcement of my re-entry into the gaming biz to announce that a team of kids who were too good to complete their degrees at Westwood College and I have banded together to make something truly revolutionary. Nu-Metal!"

"You see," mentions Hawkins, nervously shifting his direction to an elderly woman, presumably the owner of the property upon which this press conference is taking place, sternly looking on from a townhouse during this entire exchange. "Some games are action games. Some are sports games. Some, like the untouchable Army Men games, are shooters. But what do all these games, and every single game in the history of gaming have in common, you ask?" Hawkins asks to himself.

"They all require coordination. But what about these dorkfaced losers who have no coordination? We here at Digital Chocolate are currently working on a project that requires only as much coordination as required to push the Stop button on your control pad, something even those geeky nerds have. Nu-Metal!"

"Folks, this has never been done. To double our groundbreaking greatness, we are setting this game in a fantasy world with monsters and a medieval setting. You will control a young man who prefers swords, a girl who can summon fire out of NOWHERE like MAGIC and an old dwarf guy who uses axes. Oh, and the world will be overrun by monsters, like dragons and wolves." Hawkins takes a deep breath. "None of this ever done before. Nu-Metal!"

Just then the elderly woman in the townhouse exits and slowly inches her way in Hawkins' direction.

"Woah, uh, when will this project be out, you ask?" Hawkins asks himself in an obviously hurried state, "I can't announce anything official, but I can announce one thing: nothing can prepare you for this release. It'll be so great, if anybody ever calls it anything less than the best game they've ever experienced, they must be gay homosexual faggot nerds who stay at home on Friday nights because they puke when they think about talking to a girl."

"Trippy Skippy sonny," states the elderly lady when she finally reaches Hawkins. "I told you to take out the trash! Change the cat litter! Get a job and make yourself useful, you disappointing offspring. And what're these people doing on my lawn?"

"Now a new generation of gamers with new system loyalties can now experience where it all began," the president continued with increased animation. "Be sure to put 'where it all began' in italics when you guys publish this."

Wada in a more dignified state.

Wada then became uncharacteristically undisciplined and energetic as he spoke about the games themselves. "We are going to sour a new generation of role players on effect magic. Yes, spells like Holy and Ultima are going to be completely disappointing. The wolves are going to be annoying. But damnit, you'll have greater customization abilities than anything we've done in the past few years."

"The games are almost twenty years old, like... 15 years old, I think, really old, so we gotta change stuff if we're gon' profit from 'em" Wada continued stuttering just a little bit. "We here are going to energize the graphics! We're going to update them by about seven years. Yeah! Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999! Put 1999 in underlines even though the graphics are gonna be more like from 1995, that's not how the song goes." He was actually clapping his hands to a non-existent beat when discussing the game's graphics.

Wada took a few steps back from the podium. "These games have never been legally enjoyed by inferi-, err, foreigners. Until this project."

Our host of questionable sanity of sobriety began turn his back to the audience and took a several steps back before turning around in a jumpy, hasty manner and telling us "The first time on portable. By Sony. On a Sony portable system." He then took a few more steps away from the crowd.

"Hiyaaaaa!!" Wada ran toward the crowd and attempted what this reporter can only assume a cartwheeling backflip over the podium. Instead, Wada knocked the pulpit over into the front row of the herd of game industry people and people who wish they were game industry people. The bottom of the podium hit conceited game writer #68 covering this story for generic big name game site x smack dab in the forehead. This was awesome. Miraculously, this did not spill Wada's kiddie cup hopefully filled with some very strong liquor, which he placed on the floor just before greeting the sweaty throng before him.

Wada's eyes and mine met as he was getting up for a sizable chunk of time. During this interval of solid eye contact, I shot him a question about other early, pre 32-bit Final Fantasies that might deserve some attention on modern systems. Several belches, uhs, ums, hiccups and swigs from his kiddie cup later, he told me "because you're a beautiful woman, I'll tell you. We thinks we got them the attention they deserve. Yeah, we do. You'll be hearing no more from the early games here."

Wada polished of his beverage and continued, "But when the PS3 comes along it will be time release Final Fantasy I+II, and maybe IV for those gamers. This is all for now, though." He then stammered offstage blurting what we think was "no further questions."

The inclusion of Marcus, the apparently popular Fire Emblem character, is the third piece of information leaked to us, and the first to truly come from Nintendo themselves.

"Looking back on our Fire Emblem representatives for Super Smash Brothers Melee," recalls product manager Tomoyoshi Yamano, "well, quite frankly, we goofed, especially when looking at this from an American point of view. We gave them two characters: Marth, the hero from the early Fire Emblem games, a character unknown to probably a majority of even Japanese players and to its other extreme is Roy, a character thrown in largely to promote Fire Emblem 6, a game not released when Melee hit the shelves, and a game never to be released in America."

"We goofed, especially when looking at this from an American perspective," repeated Yamano. "Nobody outside Japan got to see the games these two characters come from. And since the big selling point of any Smash Brothers game is going to be nostalgia, nostalgia and more nostalgia, we really messed up big time since most people in America when playing Melee never knew any Fire Emblem at all even existed. No nostalgia there."

But will he be on a horse and have the ability to use three weapons?

Yamano takes a deep breath. "However, we have a solution: Marcus. From Fire Emblem 7 and Fire Emblem 6, but you wouldn't know about Fire Emblem 6, but the same guy was in there."

Slightly vexed by this proposition, I asked him why. "Oh, because people know Marcus," replied Yamano with a grin. "You see, we dispatched a team of search robots in infiltrate every single Fire Emblem message board on the Internet. The robot team tallies every from individual letter to words to punctuation marks, and the results are in. Marcus blows every other Fire Emblem character out of the water in number of times mentioned. In the whole words category, only the articles 'a' and 'the' are mentioned more often than Marcus. It's really kind of a no-brainer. People know Marcus."

I then asked him about what other words were also high-ranking. To which, he said: "Well, there's sucks, crappy, experience, hog, strong, beginning, skills, give, die, shitty, don't, use, him and ever."

"But here is what surprises me," Yamano jumped a little as he raised his right index finger toward the heavens, "the next highest ranking proper name our robots found on Fire Emblem message boards was Jeigan, a character found only in Japanese Fire Emblem. Early Japanese Fire Emblem. For the Famicom. I don't know how this happened, but this excites us cause these robots can only go to English message boards. I'm not supposed to give you any more details, but I'll also tell you now we haven't ruled out putting Jeigan in the Smash Brothers lineup maybe as a secret character. He beats Eirika, the next highest proper name, by a wide margin."

A group of influential members of the gaming collective were together fraternizing at a suburban San Francisco corner, probably discussing their greatness as trendsetting hipsters in their field. This Thursday early afternoon, however, something was amiss. A break in the routine occurred: a man about their age was rushing with optimal urgency in their direction. This was enough to put up the mental warning signs in the minds of the hipsters: "Nobody ever runs 'round here" recalled Reginald Q. Gayballs (he pleaded for us not to use his real name, so here it may or may not be), 29, a man "currently in between jobs" but has "done columns for many prolific and popular gaming websites."

Things turned more glaring when the man closer approached the group. Stevedore Pencilpusher, 32, also beggingly identity-protected and between jobs, but made sure I knew his video game coverage often appears "gaming mega-sites" and "ultra-circulated print magazines" alike, said, "Yeah. This guy was running like a... uh, a maniac. He was holding a copy of Entertainment Weekly up over his head... like, umm, a maniac." Pencilpusher silently cursed himself after saying this, presumably for his inability to conjure witty metaphors on the spot like a good game journalist.

"Lindsay Lohan was on the cover," continues Gayballs. "I mean, Lindsay freakin' Lohan. We should've made a break for it then and there, but, like, you know, none of us run at all. He had one of his fingers saved to the page Katamari was mentioned on. It was on a page with 'Cool Haves' or whatever they were doing. And there it was: a mainstream entertainment mag selling out our game."

"Yeah, it felt like a part of me died because I found this out," abruptly interrupted Pencilpusher. "I mean... like, It felt... as if.. if a part of me, died cause of this. GAH!" He smacked his head with the palm of his hand probably because of his un-game journalistic tendencies.

You won't be seeing Gayballs or Pencilpusher at no rain dance worship ceremony no more. At least not for Katamari Damacy.

"I mean, to put things into perspective," Gayballs gets philosophical, "this is like that Pavement record Slanted and Enchanted. Remember how great it was when it first came out? Remember how great it was the months after it was first released? Then, remember when Rolling Stone and Spin had to come along and take a dump all over it by writing positive things about it? They were basically telling mainstream sheeple to buy it, and of course, they all did. Because they're sheeple. It just wasn't as good anymore. I mean, it's still a good record and all, and I could listen to it today and like it alot, not that I would or anything, but I could never look at that record the same way ever again now that so many sheeple have it. [author's note: Yes, he really did use the word sheeple multiple times. No, you're not the only one getting dickheaded vibes from this guy.] It's like if you have a friend who pulls a gun on you. He can apologize and make up and all, but it'll never be the same between you since he did pull a gun on you."

"ERRRRRGH!!" Pencilpusher jealously and angrily shrieks after hearing the moderately effective simile in action.

After a short pause, Gayballs resumed: "What we're trying to say is that we'll be busy racking our brains finding the next worthy deity of the hipster gaming religion. The gaming elite has taken a serious blow here, perhaps more serious than any blow the gaming elite has taken before. It really hurt when a corporate non-gaming-centric magazine urinated and humiliated upon our god like I urinate on that picture of the jock who gave me massive wedgies in all throughout high school. Only people dumb enough to worship a humiliated and defeated god are Christians. In closing, we ain't that dumb, so we'll find a new game to worship. I guess we'll reduce Katamari to lesser god status. We'll still pray to it, you know, just not like before."

As Gayballs was on his soapbox during his not terribly impressive closing, Pencilpusher was lividly staring through Gayballs, growl-sighing, teeth-grinding and slowly shaking his head. Something tells me that, much like this group's take a Katamari Damacy, Pencilpusher will never look at Gayballs in quite the same light.

One can only wonder how they would react if I would have remembered to tell them that article was actually published in December 2004 and they've been worshiping what they would call a fallen god for about nine months. That would've been hilarious, I reckon.

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